


join or die

by noahfronsenburg



Category: Assassin's Creed - All Media Types
Genre: Canon Disabled Character, Cunnilingus, First Time, Fuck Or Die, Light BDSM, M/M, Mentions of Haytham/Charles and Haytham/Jim Holden, Mentions of Shay/Monro and Shay/Gist, Mildly Dubious Consent, Multiple Orgasms, Open Relationships, Penis In Vagina Sex, Porn with Feelings, Service Top, Spanking, Trans Male Character, no betas we die like men, uncomfortable sex
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2018-08-28
Updated: 2018-08-28
Packaged: 2019-07-03 20:18:10
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 10,287
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/15826194
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/noahfronsenburg/pseuds/noahfronsenburg
Summary: “Let me,” I said at last, my mouth dry upon the words. “You do not have to say it for me to see how nearly we lost you tonight. Let me help.”At last, the final shackles of indecision seemed to lift from him, and Shay grinned as if he read my intent as clear as he did any navigation chart penned by his own hand. “Near certain fucking counts for a high enough heartbeat.”





	join or die

**Author's Note:**

> shay cormac was canonically poisoned by a poison that will make his heart stop if he stops exercising and theres like five different "haytham takes care of him" fics but not ONE "fuck or die" fic.
> 
> how dare you, ac fandom. i thought we were better than this. i'll just have to do it myself i guess. and make a really bad history joke while im at it. and practice getting into the period language mindset, lord

The longest night of my life was the night of the sixteenth of October in ‘59. Surrounded by Regulars, I had clasped Captain Cormac’s elbow in my hand and sworn fervent luck to him as he had left my side, going to carry out a cruel order. I did not have to know Hope Jensen to see that Shay had cared for her in some capacity once, his eyes drawn to where he knew she was hiding, his figure tight with anxiety. He had left, his collar turned up by unbroken habit wishing for a hood, his kerchief pulled up over his face as his wont in some form of protection against most Assassin gasses, his dark eyes flinty with resolve.

And then he never returned.

Minutes passed into hours. The Regulars took the manse and I combed its grounds, a tightness to which I was most recently unaccustomed filling and constricting my throat when I could find no sign of my missing Knight but his kerchief, discarded on the floor of the warehouse at the center of the grounds. I tried to track his movements, but whatever had happened, he had not left by the ground, and even when I chased the residual blue smears that crossed the walls and onto the roof, they had moved too quick, too fast, too wild—he had been sprinting every step of the way, and even now my side was not healed enough to follow the circuitous route that he had taken up and over trees (which I was no adept at climbing, let alone running through) and rooftops.

I had to give up the ghost at the exit to the grounds, and gather all my remaining Knights to find Shay. Whatever had happened, I had an unusually cold feeling in the pit of my stomach about it.

I, once as a child, had ignored my gut when it had called to me, speaking warnings. I had trusted in my childhood certainty regarding my father’s thoughts of Reginald Birch, and whatever that power had brought me in the end would never be worth what had come of that fraught night at Queen Anne’s Square.

Never again would I be taken blindly unprepared like that. Once had been more than enough. I _would_ find Captain Cormac; whatsoever it took.

In the end it was Christopher who found Shay—surprising no-one, least of all myself. Of all among our Order, Christopher was closest to him, and while I found the man often tried my patience to the quick, Shay looked on him with the deepest of true-blooded affections. If any could have found Shay gone to ground, it was Gist, and I rushed back to Fort Arsenal as soon as I received the runner, sent to get me from where I was attempting to reconstruct his path from the residues in my second sight.

When I arrived back at Fort Arsenal, Gist met me at the door, stilled me with a single raised hand. “I found him, but he’s hardly well,” he looked somewhat haunted.

“Where was he?” I asked, following Gist stride for stride, our heads bent together. “I had hoped you might be able to run him to ground, but—“

“Still with Hope’s body.” Gist, for a moment, looked genuinely haunted, and I could see his age at the tightness of his eyes and the sallow cut of his mouth. “He was almost insensible, walking in circles around where she’d fallen. He’s not sat still since.”

“Good God,” I felt my heart sink; that must have been. Hours ago. “Since Hope died?”

“At least.” It was false dawn. He had left my side at half-eight the night before. He had—moved all that time?

We had reached Shay’s room, and Gist opened the door, revealing the inside. What spartan furniture Shay possessed had been shoved to the sides of the room, and he was running in frantic circles around the open space, gasping for breath with every motion.

We both stared.

Neither of us moved, watching Shay run about in circles. At last, when I could feel my own vision becoming dizzied watching him, I managed, my voice cracking, to speak. “Captain Cormac?”

“Mornin’,” he replied, entirely out of breath. Although I could not get the clearest look at him, what glimpses I did get as he ran past me were not reassuring to the value of his present state. He was pale with some illness and his face slick and badly flushed with old sweat, his hair matted almost black with it, sticking in clumps to his face and neck. He had lost the tie for his hair somewhere, and it hung lank around his face. He sounded absolutely exhausted; the sort of bone-tired weariness that dogged a man’s last steps. “My apologies. If I stop moving like as not I’ll die.”

“ _What_?” I snapped. Shay shrugged rather than answer, not wasting his breath as he ran, and I turned to Christopher mutely, raised my eyebrows in expectation.

“Hope shot him with something I’ve never seen before,” he explained, glancing furtively at Shay with every word, his lips pursed. “It slows his heart. As long as he’s keeping it apace he should be fine until the poison burns out of his system, but even so much as walking rather than a quicker jog left him nearly delirious. He hardly recognized me when I found him.” I noticed, now Gist mentioned it, there was the mark of what looked distinctly like knuckles on his cheek. He rubbed his jaw. “Gave me a pretty good knock before he got his wits about himself again. He took the antidote she had on her, and it’s made it more manageable, but all we can do is wait until he’s worked it out of his system.”

“And Hope is, as you mentioned—“

“Dead. Saw her body myself. She’s not going to be coming back any time soon, Sir.” I nodded, quietly pleased at least with that turn of events, then folded my hands behind my back and turned once more to face where Shay was running in circles. Gist saluted, tipping his hat—he knew to take my body language as a dismissal rather than wait for my words, since I loathe to waste even one—and left, closing the door behind him.

Shay continued to run, sliding over his bedspread cover each time he passed it. It was more akin to something I expected from a penny-farce, not one of the men I had found of late I most respected. But fate and fortune make fools of us all, I suppose: I had the scar and limp to show for my own ill-gained experience in such matters.

At last, reluctant to speak that which was dogged my mind, I opened my mouth to speak and then shut it again when I could not find what it was I wished to say. Rarely was I ever at a loss for words, but in this present situation I did indeed find myself near-speechless. “Is there anything I can do to help?” I managed at last. “Anything I can fetch you? Water? Coffee, tea? We could spar?” I hesitated a moment longer, then took my hat off, set it aside atop Shay’s closed-up desk. “I could fetch horses, we ride out to the country so you at least have fresh air—“

“’ll be fine,” he managed, out of breath. “Getting better, can sit still long enough to drink and eat.” The fact that he was so unperturbed by his present situation in some ways upset me more than his poisoning did. He should not have been made to suffer so previously in his life to take this as only his due.

“Be that as it may, Shay— _I_ sent you in there alone. As your Grand Master, I am responsible for your wellbeing and safety and I have rarely erred as grievously as I clearly did last night. I should have been with you, should have helped you canvas the area—“

“Wouldn’t’ve mattered,” he replied, gasping. “She shot the window out from under me. You’d have gone down with me.” I winced—even the mere thought sent a shock of pain through my side, and I only resisted pressing my hand to the injury through long practice. If I had fallen two stories or more like that, I would have been lucky to have even been conscious, let alone strong enough to move as Shay was at present.

“Did you break anything?” He shook his head. I could feel my own heart pounding, to nowhere near as fast as his own—my worry for his state when he had not return was compounding now with fear for what had very nearly happened. If Gist had not found him, how much longer could have have remained, wandering in circles, before he collapsed? He looked close to it now, but at least the plate of cheese and sliced apples and several glasses of water on his bedside table said enough that he was at least keeping up his energy as best he could.

And we were not out of the woods yet. Anything could still happen. If Gist had never seen the poison, and he had spent years working in the frontier with all sorts and had plenty of time to come across such in his travels, that meant it was something new.

I was loathe to trust new, untested compounds.

They had a habit of never working quite as intended.

But now, watching Shay as he truly did run for his life, I found myself regretting any false or unfaithful thought I had ever had about him, even prior to our meeting upon my return from Europe. I had been as resistant as William had been when George had written to me what he had done when he had found Shay. I may have been from a significant distance, but I could not conscience letting Lawrence Washington’s killer live as an entirely unknown element. Even if I was from Assassin stock myself, bringing such a man as Shay Cormac into a Templar household could have ended in disaster. Instead, we had gained our greatest weapon: one I had almost just destroyed through my own negligence, one of whom I had once thought truly ill of simply by nature of that with whom he had thrown his lot before myself.

A man who, if I was being fully honest with myself, I cared for as far more than just a talented subordinate. There was a gulf of difference between that of a well-kept tool and the way I saw Captain Cormac. We had been circling for months, he and I, trading barbs in the mien of compliments and the same in reverse, finding occasions to spar in ways that were far from proper simply for the pure delight of it. Even on our first meeting, the day of his initiation, I had felt drawn to Shay in a way I had not been since I had met Charles, where I had wanted him nearly on-sight and found him just as desirous of his place in my bed in turn.

I was no stranger to the ways of courtship from other men. Charles and Jim were not the only two men who had come to my bed before I met Shay Cormac; I doubted either would be the last. Shay was near as interested as I was, if his previous hints were of any indication. To have almost lost another whom I cared for deeply, so close to Jim’s death—

I was Grand Master and such an exalted rank meant being honest with my resources and disposing of them properly upon all occasions. It meant knowing that Shay, fully trained and equipped Master Assassin as he was, with an intimate knowledge of brewing and using his own poisons taken from Assassin stock, was the correct choice to go after the Assassin poison-master. He had been trained by Hope for years while in the Brotherhood; by consequence of their nearness he knew her weaknesses and strengths and was the best climber in the Order in the Colonies by far. I was no longer even a respectable second; my side may have looked healed, but the pain it brought me upon too much exertion was blinding. Even my intervention to buy time for Shay against Adéwalé had cost me near three days abed on the voyage back to New York.

I might be able to fight far more credibly than most gave me credit for upon a glance, but to run pell-mell through the streets of New York, potentially injured? I would have been nothing but a liability to Shay. As dearly as I desired to take to the field, I was no longer that sort of piece, to play myself when and where I pleased.

But, God help me, I wish I had been with him so he did not have to struggle so alone. I said as much, and Shay looked grateful for the sentiment, as useless as it was to him now.

Still: business would not wait, not for mice nor for men. “Can the brief wait?” I asked of him, voice urgent. Shay nodded, and then shook his head, crashing onto his mattress and doubling over, heaving for breath as he picked up one of the cups of water that Gist had no doubt placed there, proceeded to swallow all of it before he spoke and began, once more, the feat no doubt Sisyphean (and oh, I commended his strength, to do the undoable) he began to run again.

“Won’t make a difference,” he admitted. “We can’t sail for two days at least.”

“Is Gist getting the _Morríg_ an seaworthy?” I asked, guessing what he meant. He nodded. Good; so at least whatever he needed to chase down whoever he was chasing would be ready for him as soon as he was able to do so. He would no doubt need those two days to regain his strength, if not more, although I could not be sure of what all I would need to divert for this new journey until he was able to give me a fuller account of the night’s events, and indeed, whether my own presence would be needed upon the quarterdeck.

Shay was still looking at me, panting for breath as his running slowed. He was _exhausted_ —he looked truly terrible, like more to a corpse than a living man, and his breathing, so ragged and broken, made me long to do surely ill-advised things in our present situation. I could not undo that which had already befallen him, but I was broken by my need to repair it. “Captain Cormac,” I started, and then stopped myself, knowing now was not the time for such formality. “Shay?”

Now he was staring at me in such a way that I could not in truth read it, bouncing on his toes as he waited for me to speak, running in place. His eyes were dark, and made all the more so by the terrible flush that covered what parts of his face were not in pallor. With his hair loose and wild, he was a great, untamed creature of a world I had never truly known, he had only ever temporarily allowed himself to come to heel, to take to leash. Even now, I could tell, he was close to snapping that lead, his heart worn thin and sore by that he’d been forced to do, sick with want of succor.

I knew what killing those you loved, however badly they had wrong you, however far they had fallen, did to you. The agony it shattered inside of you. If I could balm it, apply even a temporary, imperfect tincture, if I could alleviate the slightest of agonies from his shoulders when he seemed so unable to bear all that forced him down—

“Let me,” I said at last, my mouth dry upon the words. “You do not have to say it for me to see how nearly we lost you tonight. _Let me help_.”

At last, the final shackles of indecision seemed to lift from him, and he grinned as if he read my intent as clear as he did any navigation chart penned by his own hand. “Near certain fucking counts for a high enough heartbeat,” he said, and I sighed aloud in relief that he had understood my overture without my putting it to such vulgar terms. He turned and abruptly grabbed the next glass of water, and drank it all as quickly as he possibly could. “That’s a yes. Anything’s better than running ‘til I collapse.”

“Thank God,” I whispered, crossing the last five steps to his bed and catching him by the lapels. I hauled him to meet me, and he grabbed the back of my head in both his hands, pulled me closer as we kissed. It was no fine example of the art—too much teeth, for one thing, and he was barely able to close his mouth against mine, panting too hard as he was. But, God, was it like being hit by a bolt of lightning and thrown from the grasp of the Earth. He was panting, trembling against me with adrenaline and exhaustion all over, and he made a broken noise into my mouth as I undid the clasp on my cloak, dropped it, and practically tore his coat off of him, threw it aside on the ground and started fumbling as fast as I could with the buttons of my own. “When you never returned—I feared the worst, truly. I thought I would go mad from it.”

As much as I tried to pretend otherwise, both for the sake of those beneath me and my own sanity, I was still too new to this. I had only been Grand Master for four years, and for two of those I had been called away from the Colonies by force, taken out of anything resembling contact distance.

Losing Shay would have been the first true loss of the Colonial Rite under my loss, and the very thought that he, this brilliant bird of prey, could have been my first failure—

“Make my own luck,” he replied, but it was free of its usual cocksuredness; instead, it was frightened and raw, hopeless. “Nearly didn’t,” he admitted a moment later, between more aching kisses, stripping off his own waistcoat with clumsy hands. “Hit a beam on the way down. Elsewise would have landed on my head.”

The most horrid surge of fright took me then, and I pulled him close, kissed him desperately, longingly, finding in my new knowledge of him reassurance that he was alive, _safe_ for whatever measure that was. He opened his mouth against mine, wheezing into the kiss with how bone-weary he was, and I made short work of the rest of the buttons of my coat and waistcoat, crushing him to me so I could feel the too-fast beat of his heart against mine. “It would have killed me,” I admitted, my voice almost breaking as I told him so, let it be lost in our kiss, the rawness of the emotion too much to face head-on. “I care for you,” I told him, disengaging from our kisses as he grabbed the top of one boot, struggling out of it, freezing in my grasp as I took him by either side of his face, stared deep into his eyes, let my thumbs brush over his cheekbones.

It was folly, I knew, to hold him so still. But I had to—I had to see him true, had to let _him_ see me true, beneath all the trappings of rank and expectation that created the exigencies of my station and the words I could not put voice to for the dangers that it would impart. There must needs be some deniability, some lack of proof and agency to that which I felt to him. Otherwise, he would have become beholden to me in ways that I could not bear. “ _Terribly_. I find myself enchanted with you. My dear boy, if you had died, it would have killed me, slain me dead as sure as a bullet to the heart. I could not bear it. I could not abide it. I cannot lose another, and certainly not you.

“If you had not returned and your death hung accountable on my orders, if you had been subjected to such foul tortures, I would have rent the world in twain for want of you, and no number of Assassins could have stopped me from flaying Hope Jensen alive.”

I was not Edward Braddock. I refused to become him and make right from might.

But I would be damned if I was not at last after all things the man Reginald had raised, for good or ill as it may have been, and I would have cut my due from Hope’s skin, quite literally, if I had been forced to.

Shay dropped his second boot to the ground. As I had spoken, watched his handsome face so presently open with his defenseless state, his eyes had grown dark, his pupils blown wide, and he now went totally still for the first since I had walked into the room. He licked his dry lips, panting, and swallowed audibly. I could see his throat bob as he did it, the skin near to the nape of his neck bared from his missing kerchief, still in my possession, tucked into the pocket of my coat.

“You sure know how to make a man something awful tender,” Shay whispered, his voice cracking. I tried my best to manage for him my usual, sharp-edged smile, dripping with guile. I was certain it did not succeed, for something in his face shifted as if he could read me as well from that look as he could the guts of a ship at a glance. “You nug,” he added, laughing—aye, and crying, too, I noticed, tears in his eyes—as he dragged me closer again, our kiss twice as sharp as the truth of that which we could not speak aloud died buried in it so only we could know.

“Later,” I promised, toeing off my own boots as I crowded him back towards the bed, aching in my desire for him. “Later, we can take all the time in the world. Hours, days—“

“Sweet and soft,” he agreed, laughing again as he kicked his other boot off, as I undid the buttons of my breeches and wrestled out of them, as he did the same. He pulled his stockings free as I climbed onto the bed over him, thumbing my own down and loosing them the rest of the way with the aid of my toes, wanting too dearly to place my hands upon the planes of his wanton body. “Boring—“

“Yes, but I wish to _know_ you, Shay.”

“Biblically,” his whisper was dark, his voice hoarse on the word, and I shuddered at it as he twisted beneath me, his breeches dropping over the side of the mattress. “What more is there to know?”

“So much,” I managed, pulling his face to me, kissing his upturned, open mouth. “All of you, I wish to know all of you, all that you desire, you think—to see you sleep and dream, your eyelashes, to watch your chest rise and fall beneath the moonlight, to hear your thoughts on everything from breakfast to the King—“

“Never took you for the soppy romantic, Sir.”

When I spoke next, it was to tug my shirt over my head, and my voice came out fierce with all the impotent, unbridled rage and terror I had struggled with all night, as I had searched frantically and without success for his route. “Yes,” I said, throwing my shirt aside, sitting between Shay’s thighs in nothing but my skin, “But tonight, I waved you off to fight a woman who could have killed me with ease with nary even a proper farewell, then spent _eight hours_ believing I had sent one of the two best men I have ever been blessed to know to his death.” I pressed my hands flat to his thighs, leaned over him on the bed. “Tonight, of all nights, I believe I can be excused, if you would be so kind as to keep it to yourself.”

“Christ alive,” Shay whispered, and finally pulled his shirt off.

And I froze, blinking at the sight of him.

“Sorry,” he said, immediately, as he realized I had stilled. “I didn’t—don’t think George ever told anyone—“

“Oh,” I said, staring down at him. The body I had expected had been one I had no few fantasies about. I had seen his measurements, had them sent to me to get his uniform made, and it had been all too easy to extrapolate once we had met. Shay was just a hair taller than I, and I had imagined a proportionate cock, with a thick thatch of his dark brown hair about its base. He was so narrow I had been ready for his chest to be just the same, nearly fleshless with small, hard nipples, dusted with the same dark hair that was upon his head, not near as thick as my own but all the more beautiful for the limit of it, a gift to be savored, for the scent of him, of manhood and steel, buried in the hollow of his throat and the join of his knee. I had been ready for his beautiful hipbones, like handles, like—

His breasts were small. Smaller, even, than my own chest was, built broad and thick with muscle. He was as narrow as I had expected, but his chest was topped with breasts, hard and flat but still a swell, his nipples a strangely pale pink against his otherwise dark coloring. Hair spotted and crossed his chest, but it did not bely the nature of that which it covered. They would hardly press against my hands, but I could never have doubted it for anything else with all his clothes gone. I was no connoisseur of them, but even the abstinent knows wine from water.

In place of a cockstand, there was only the high mound of Shay’s pubic bone, the bush of pubic hair wider and softer than any wiry curls I had ever seen, covering the entire top of his mons to his labia, as far down as I could see.

I stared, my tongue stuck to the roof of my mouth as my body and brain processed at wildly different speeds, trying to come to terms with what I had long believed to be ingrained about my preference for genitalia and the fact that, I was belatedly realizing, it did not in fact matter to me at all. Shay was what I was attracted to; the beguiling, brilliant swordsman, fast as lightning with a pistol and almost quicker with his barbed tongue, ingratiating and insubordinate all at once, devoted beyond words to a cause I rarely found I could even be true to. And handsome, God, handsome as few men I had ever met were.

I could easily believe the stories he and Gist often shared around drinks. Women were not the only ones who would flock to him. He captivated any room he walked into.

“Problem?” Shay managed, after a moment, still panting for breath. I could see he was flushing—in embarrassment, like as not, or anger, and I set my hand on his shoulder for reassurance.

“No,” I quickly said. “Just. Unprepared, and, I am afraid, I am rather...unpracticed.”

“Not alone in that one,” he quickly replied. “I don’t normally—I can barely sit up,” he said, apologetically, and I could see that it was true now he had finally found some more stable form of exertion. Beneath him, his arms were trembling like leaves in the wind, and he looked nearly ready to collapse back, even his elbows giving in. “Never been much of a one to receive affections.”

“I daresay I can’t say I’ve ever been much of one for giving them,” I admitted. “I shall not lie to you and say I’m not disappointed by not being able to fuck myself on your cock like I was trying to take a tilt, but—“

“Hell,” Shay whimpered, shut his eyes for a moment. “No, I can. We’ve. I’ve got plenty; I have loads. Probably five or six cocks I could use on you, Christ alive. God, next time, want to press your face into the bed and—“

“Please,” I agreed, desperately, pulling him back up to me, and he moaned into my mouth. “Please, I should thank spirits above and below.”

“Next time,” he promised. “This time I—it’s easiest, just. Don’t let me slow down, Sir, please.”

“Yes,” I agreed. “That’s fine.” I paused, and added, cupping one of his sharp cheeks in my hand, my thumb brushing over the scar below his eye, “It is you, Shay. That is all that matters to me. I care not what the package is; I was merely surprised. I told you,” Pressing him back into the sheets, hiding my whisper in the hollow of his throat, “I wish to know all of you, my dear man. To be your servant, in this as in all things.”

“I’m your servant,” he choked back, as I kissed the top of one breast, his chest heaving against me as he tried to catch his breath. “Not the other way—Sir—“ I bit, gently, against his collarbone, and he twisted with a hot “Yes,” and I did it again, harder, sinking my teeth into his skin. “Do it all, hard as you can,” he begged. “I need it—keep me going, Sir—“

“I am well acquainted with that fine place where pain and pleasure meet,” I assured him. “Trust in me, Shay. Let me. I shan’t let you fall.” I kissed him again as he tore the tie at last from my hair, pulling me down to him, his fingers tangling in it at the base of my neck, his ragged nails scraping my scalp. “Let me, Shay. You did all that tonight—so well for me, Shay, so perfect for me. Let me take care of you, I could want for nothing more.”

The noise he made into my mouth was high like a gunshot-whine in my ear, and I flattened my hand over his breast, ground the base of my palm into him.

I pressed him into the bed, started at his neck. He needed pain—the bliss between it and pleasure, the moment when a willow cane met the flesh of his thighs, the pull of fingers in his hair, of not enough oil—he needed all that his body could produce, the fear and terror and agony and need and want. He could have no such thing as satiation of sensation. He had to be euphoric, escaping death with a glut of all that was life; existence and animation in surfeit.

And so I kissed his neck, bit his pale skin, his pulse pounding high and fast beneath my mouth. I explored the swells of his breasts, hard with muscle but yet still supple with fat over that. Under my fingers his nipples hardened to peaks, and the noise he made when I took one in my mouth and bit down on the tip went straight to the core of me, broke something deep within me until I did it again and again, left marks against his pale skin in the shape of my teeth.

I had never heard Shay Cormac beg before. I doubted anyone had; he was not the begging sort. Any Assassin who called him my dog did not know him at all; he was no dog. He was a hunting hawk. He came when called, but only because he cared for home. His nature was not given to searching for the care and love of another: his life was defined by twos, himself and his ship. All others had been tragically fleeting: nobody had ever remained by him.

I had expected him to be a quiet man during sex, except perhaps for whispering filth as he drove into me hard enough to rattle the headboard. I had seen him shot the year before, and he had made not a noise as the bullet had struck him. I had been standing right beside him as the sharpshooter had done it, and it was only after the battle, the _Moírrgan_ skimming the waves to safe harbor, that he had mumbled he needed someone to get the bullet free of his leg.

I had seen him knocked off of roofs, seen him crack his skull into the _Morrígan’s_ wheel on numerous occasions, seen him stabbed. And he had never once complained; not even as I had stitched shut the wound on his thigh. He’d only sworn twice, once at the beginning and once at the end. Seen more mundane hurts, too—fingers slammed in a door, a pistol discharging beside his ear, spilled wax upon the sensitive hollow of his wrist.

But now, beneath me, he begged.

I had no small doubt it was the poison that had weakened his innate disposition, his control robbed from him by artificial means. It _shamed_ me, that he had been brought so low within himself by Hope; that I had not done better to protect him. Was that not what I had promised myself, promised Jenny, I would do with my allegiances? Protect those for whom I felt devotion?

(Later, I would learn what he really did do during sex. He had a mouth that read of twenty years at sea, and lashed filth from it like a devotee would decry holy script, each word benediction and plea together, how he only cried out when he came.)

This morning, with the later end of dawn shining through the half-cracked curtains over the eastern windows, Shay howled.

He _begged_ , pleaded, gasped, praised me. He tugged my hair, pulled my head where he needed it most, and his chest purpled beneath my mouth and my sharp teeth, his nipples hard and raw when I was done with them. His face was as flushed as I knew my own was, his eyes wide, when I finally slid between his thighs, and the garbled noise he made when I put my mouth to him, slid two fingers inside him—

Ziio had found my education with her body sorely wanting, and had taught me with an efficiency I had at the time been unprepared for, but now, with hindsight, I could only spare her fervent thanks for what she had done for me. It had been of course equally self-serving, even if our dalliance had been for the purpose of production for her own needs, but I had seen no ill in learning a new skill.

Now I could do nothing but praise her thorough instruction. A goddess among women, that one.

I scraped my teeth over Shay’s clit, my tongue under the hood, two fingers curled inside him. He was tight, so _bleeding_ tight that it made my head spin and pound at the thought of it, and terribly, terribly hot. He was running a fever, that had been clear from the moment I had seen his face, but it made inside him scalding with all that heat refracted and returned between his thighs. I licked at him, fucked him with my fingers, my face burrowed between his thighs and slick with the heart of him as he came apart beneath me, twisting against the sheets, one hand dragging my face closer and the other white-knuckled in the cover of his bedspread.

He sobbed when he came, curled in upon himself as if in the worst of agonies, his stomach fluttering and seizing under my hand as I held him down, kept him going just like Ziio had shown me, softening my tongue as I laved over his clit, slid it inside him, urged him and drew him on as long as he could take it. Shay just shook, gasping, “Haytham, Haytham,” as he rode it out, his head thrown back and the line of his throat pale and beautiful with the marks purpling it, his hair a messy dark halo, throwing the skin of his face into contrast that left my heart twisting within my chest, as fine as any painting by an old master.

I only stopped when he jerked on my hair so hard a few strands pulled free, and he lay beneath me then, seemingly insensible, sprawled in utter dishabille, his chest heaving. I lay my head against the inside of his thigh, kissed it, then the hollow of his knee. “How are you,” I asked, my voice raw and wet.

“Needs more.” I shifted between his legs, pulled him down to me as I sat up, wiping my face on the back of my forearm so I could kiss him again. He returned it with no less fervor than I gave, albeit banked, the embers of his reserves running slow.

“Should I strike you?” I asked, low. I found pleasure in it, agonizingly so, but not all were as receptive. Charles had balked for months when I had first asked it of him, horrified by the thought of debasing me, and I did not wish to presume as such with Shay, when he was already so incapacitated.

At the very suggestion, though, his sharp intake of breath made my own cock jump. “Please,” his voice was nearly a whimper as he spoke. “Please, Haytham.”

“Over, then,” sat up the rest of the way, helped him turn. This he could be still during, he could remain in one place: the sheer act, the strike of my hand against the back of his arse and thighs, would spike his heart rate as well as did running. “Do you think you can eat between them?”

“Probably.” I stroked my fingers along the wet of his folds, gently, to feel him shudder against me as he pulled the plate over and took two apple slices, shoving the first into his mouth.

“Do you wish to keep count?”

“Surprise will put me more-on edge.” He was right, and I waited as long as I dared, the fingers of my right hand resting against the side of his neck where his head hung loose, feeling for the beat of his pulse, while I continued to trace his backside with my left. As soon as he nodded, I left my check for his heartbeat where it was, and did not give him any warning before I brought down the first strike, open-palmed against one cheek.

Shay jumped against me, and the noise I made as he pressed down against my erection was undignified at best and, at worst, ruined.

“God, yes,” Shay leaned more onto his shaking elbows. “Harder.”

I was all too happy to oblige. Focusing on his pulse beneath my hand, I started with the bottom of his arse against the base of his pelvis, before I moved upward to the top, and then down to the sensitive folds of his thighs, where each strike made him hiss between his teeth and yelp. As I brought my hand down, ignoring the soreness of my own palm as I did all for his pleasure, his needs, his legs widened and widened until I found no recourse but to ask him to hold himself open, leaving strikes within his crack, over his rear entrance, making him sob, hiss, spit in pleasure.

And then, to my surprise perhaps as much as his own, Shay rolled over of his own accord, pushed me back with one foot, and pulled his own thighs wide, his knees brought back to his shoulders, the heart of him pulled open for me. He looked up at me then, over his heaving chest, marked so with my mouth, his eyes heavy-lidded and wanton, bit his reddened lower lip.

“You are beautiful,” I told him, even as a dozen endearments and compliments, poetic license for the picture he made against his bedspread in my half-dozen languages sprang to mind. Unbidden, I traced my fingers over him again, dragging through the slick that now soaked his labia and clit, so much of it that it was splattered onto his thighs—his pitcher did poureth out, and I longed to take from it another drink. My cock throbbed with want of it, the desire to bury myself in that heat.

“Strike my cunt,” Shay told me, and—in that tone of voice, with that language, I swallowed around the stoppage in my throat. I squeezed the whole of him in my hand, felt the tension in his body escalate.

“If you’re sure,” I glanced up at him, and he nodded. I coaxed his legs wider, brought the first strike against him down across the top of his lips, and he rocked up off of the bed with a hiss, shaking at it. He nodded when he was ready, and I aimed the next higher, so the meat of my palm struck his clit, and he yelped aloud, his head dropped back boneless on his neck as he shuddered all over.

It took three more strikes before he came again, this time sobbing for troth as he rolled over upon himself, escaping the strike of my hand, his slick gushing from him now—the pitcher upended. It dripped to the bedspread, and he fell back to the mattress afterward, gasping for breath again, spread-eagled in exhaustion.

I set my hand upon is heaving flank, brushed it back and forth like I would soothe a ragged horse, worn from a too-harsh ride. “Do you need a rest?” I asked, my own needs not as pressing at the moment as were his own. “Before you ask me, I can certainly wait, as long as you need. This is for you, as I promised.”

Shay took some time to respond, seemingly lost in the combined mindless bliss after so many completions and the poison that still raged within him. When he did speak, it was with a weariness that belied how truly, deeply bone-tired he was. How he was still fighting I could not begin to know, but there he was, clawing his way out of the grave Hope would have had him left in if she’d had her way.

“A fine idea,” Shay murmured at last, his accent so thick it was almost incomprehensible, rolling the words in his mouth, “If I could.” I checked his pulse without thinking, and while it was still high, it was slowing. “It’s working,” he added, nodding his head slightly as he spoke. “Can feel it. It’s less—doesn’t feel like drowning any time I slow.” He cracked a smile. “Probably sweating it out.”

“Eat, some, then. Do you want me to go get you another glass of water?”

“In your state?” I glanced down at myself at his words, and found it difficult to bite back a smile: I was in no more semblance fit for company than he was, my hair round my shoulders and my erection hanging enthusiastically between my thighs, red with want, weeping already from the slit.

“You have a fair point, Captain Cormac. I shall go fetch you victuals _after_ you are no longer presently dying.”

He laughed, a gritty, ragged, sound from his raw throat, and grinned at me with his eyes closed like a lovestruck loon, reached blindly for me until his hand found my elbow, pulled me closer until I was atop him, pressing him into the sheets.

“I’ll eat after, too.” His kisses were heat in the deadest of winters, burning ice from within me—if I had been an iceberg, I would have melted before the force of him, drawn to him like this. “Almost done, I think.”

“Can you be sure?” I leaned on my elbow over him. “Certain of it?”

“Earlier if I’d so much as stopped running, I got faint, delirious. Just—tired, now.” He set one hand low on my back, pulled me to him. It was strange, being so out of control in the bedroom, a lot that had not often been mine in adult life. Receiving affections became my needs, but rarely was I anything so unbecoming as a passive partner. Now, all my attention and energies focused into my care for Shay, to anything he would of me, I could but wait until he found what he needed most. “You going to fuck me any time today, Sir, or should I shove my hand up there? Ride a bedpost?”

“Good God,” I choked, pulling his hands from my back, pressing his wrists into the bed. “You would kill me. I think, and no offense meant to your current situation, watching you do the latter would make my heart explode.” Even just the _idea_ made my mind spin. His legs were certainly long enough to reach the floor, and watching him ride it—it was more than positively indecent, it was enough to be tried as witchcraft in some parts of New England, I was certain of it.

Shay laughed again, that same throaty sound, hoarse and smoky, and I swallowed it into my kiss. I reached down between his thighs, took hold of my own base, slid two fingers into him again. He was looser now, relaxed as his body both came down from the artificial high of the poison as well as the lassitude after his peak. I tried a third, to be sure, and found no resistance past his own natural unpracticed tightness—I had not expected any, for even if his words from earlier were true, and he’d never taken a man as such like this, Ziio had thoroughly disabused me of any false implications my Protestant and relatively-conservative upbringing had left me with regarding the concept of virginity.

“Tell me when you’re ready,” I said, and Shay responded by grabbing either side of my arse and squeezing.

“Now, Haytham, damn your hide.”

“No need for that,” I huffed it under my breath but did not miss his grin, “We shall have to work on your disobedient mouth,” I continued as I pulled my fingers free of him, slicked my length with my own weeping pre and his slick, pressed his thighs wider, held him open. “I find defiance suits you terribly well to drawing me to go to bed with you, but it does not truly befit the most loyal of Templars.”

He did not respond, for at that moment I pushed into him, and we both fell silent, lost in the cacophony of our own sensation as it drowned out all else into utter noise. I shut my eyes, bent over him, my forehead pressed to his sternum as I breathed in the scent of his sweat and his sex, his blunt nails dug into my shoulders as he held me down. Beneath me he panted for breath as I slid the rest of the way home, his body opening up for me until it could take no more with ease and, tentatively, I pushed.

When I bottomed out within him, deep as I could go, Shay swore under his breath so colorfully I felt myself flush at the content of it. He shifted against me, rolling his hips, attempting to find a more comfortable angle, our hearts pounding as one as they beat like drummers sounding the call to march to battle, the waking call of my years in the army rattling off within our chests.

“Are you quite all right, _mi alma?_ ” The endearment rolled from my tongue without my conscious thought to it, lost as I was in the haze of him.

“Didn’t know you spoke Spanish,” Shay said it at length, as he eased around me. “Suppose I shouldn’t be surprised after what you did to my clit earlier. What else can that talented mouth of yours do?”

“Speak French, German, Latin with passable Italian, and Turkish.” Shay whistled. “I had a _very_ thorough Classical education.”

“You’d better teach me some proper insults before I go put my blade through Chevalier’s head,” Shay meant it to be light-hearted, but I could taste the malice and steel in his words: he had spoken little to me—or, indeed, to any in the order aside from the late Colonel—of his time in the Assassins, but he had made it clear to all of us that he did not want to take the onus of Hope or Liam’s blood on his hands, and his regret at Adéwalé’s death had left him mute for nearly the entire trip back to New York, the look on his face that of a man haunted. Not so, it appeared, for de la Vérendrye.

There had been a family there. He had cared for them, deeply, with a great deal of his self. They had given him a reason to live, a creed, a home—and they had betrayed him, forced his hand, and turned upon him when he had tried to speak the truth.

I had never questioned him on what had made him leave, but I had required he give at least some details as to the events that had led to his discovery, near-dead with pneumonia and a concussion and a pistol wound through the chest just above his heart, when Colonel Monro had come across his barely-breathing corpse. His description of Lisbon had been much as the way I tended to describe those events which had shattered and reshaped my own thinking: he had not spoken of it. He had simply said where he had been.

I lived with enough of a soldier’s heart weeping within my chest to know it’s twin when I saw it. That was what else had drawn me to Shay, different from my desires toward Charles—I had never met another who had been so profoundly ruined by that which he had seen.

It made me feel a little more human again, after Jim’s death.

“Now,” Shay said, breaking me from my reverie, my face buried in the hollow of his throat. “Heart’s getting too slow.”

“We’d best move, then,” I agreed, sitting up, rearranging myself between his legs. I had not softened in the time I had been waiting for him to find his comfort. In fact, if anything, I was harder from the heat of him, surrounding me, holding me tight. Shay had slung his arms around my neck to hold onto me close, and he did not let go as I leaned over him, watched his face, his half-lidded eyes, dark and fierce and bottomless, drawing me in. I caught one of his knees over my elbow, kept my other hand on his waist, and pulled back out, my groan rumbling deep in my chest.

“Hell,” Shay’s voice cracked in my ear.

And then I drove back into him, as deep as his body could take me—he yelped, his hips rolling up off the bed, and he shut his eyes even as my forehead dropped to his. “Gentler?” My lips felt almost numb, but he shook his head, his jaw tight. His health, now, came before his comfort, and I pressed a kiss to the curve of his temple, buried my nose in his hair as I did it again and again.

He had to be finding some pleasure, for he squeezed around me every time I pulled out, whining, and sighed, the cloudy tension relieving from his expressive forehead when I drove home, only to lock up again when I bottomed out. I murmured to him as best I could, trying to soothe him, even as I fucked him.

“Shay,” I asked, letting his leg go, taking his face in my hands as he panted against me. “Shay, look at me. _Mi alma_ , please. Let me see you.” He took two quick breaths, huffed out through his nose, and then opened his eyes. They were wet with hints of tears, and he gave me this little, tremulous smile, lifted his hand to brush my hair back out of my face. “Should I stop? If this is hurting you, if it is not what you want—“

“No.” He shook his head. “Haytham—“

“I know it shan’t hurt you,” I added. “You need not remind _me_ of what you look like with a musket ball embedded in your thigh.” He did laugh at that, his eyes crinkling at the sides. “But if you are uncomfortable, Shay, I don’t—“

“If I wanted you to stop, I’d tell you.” He would at that. I kissed him again, felt him smile against my mouth. “Don’t stop. Not just because of Hope’s poison.”

So I didn’t. Somewhere with in that, Shay stopped wincing, and rolled up into my thrusts instead, pulled me closer with the hand around my neck, coaxed me into placing my hand atop one breast again, to pinch his nipple and encourage him into finding the right angle to push against my hardness. When it became too much, his body clenching around me and his lips on mine, his fingers scratching the plane of my back, I begged my warning into his mouth and let him pull me closer with his heels at the small of my back, drawing me into him as I came, shuddering as I pushed my face into the hollow of his throat, teeth bared, moaning as I chased the high fucking into him harder than before, my palm below the flat of his back, lifting him towards me.

“Christ,” I whispered, after I was done, my heart cymbal-loud in my ears. Shay was gasping beneath me, and when I finally managed to pull out he grunted, his mouth open as he tried to regain his balance. “What do you need,” I asked, looking at him as I leaned back to my heels, and he lifted one leg, his fingers sliding beneath his folds and scrubbing over his clit.

“God, Sir, your mouth again—“ Shay bit his lower lip, swollen from our kisses, as he spoke, and I did not need to be told twice, kissed his palm as I moved his hand out of the way, spread his thighs and lifted his hips from the bedspread again.

My jaw and mouth had grown sore and tired from the amount I had been using them, my tongue aching with exertion it was unused to, but that would not stop me. I wanted to see Shay taken by that awful small death once more beneath me, to give him half the pleasure and joy his company gave me and just a fraction of how dearly I appreciated what he had done for me during the night, so I took to eating him out with the same fervor I had once taken to my training with the sword.

And, indeed, my mouth full of my seed and his slick combined, my tongue pressed to his clit and two fingers buried inside him where he had begged me to press him full, Shay came again, both his hands clenching my head and pulling me closer, his nails dug into my scalp, his back bent to an arch off of the bed, crying out even as he rocked up on his toes, his knees pressed hard around me as his body shuddered in the force of his orgasm. He tried to push me away, drag me closer at once, and I chased it, watching him with a whether eye until Shay moaned, “Haytham, I can’t—“ and only then did I stop, ease my fingers out of him, press my face to the base of his stomach and listen to the too-rapid beat of his heart as he slumped, boneless, to the bed, his boneless fingers clumsy as they tried to pull tangles free from my hair.

“How’s your heart?” I asked, breathing hot onto the fine hairs at the base of Shay’s stomach as I spoke. He twisted beneath me, trying to get away from it, so I did it again to hear him grunt in displeasure.

“Little slow,” if it were possible, Shay sounded even more exhausted than he had before—like he had hardly enough strength left in him to open his mouth to speak. “But beating.” I kissed the shadow below his navel, above his pubic hair, overcome with my reassurance at his state. “Should be fine now.”

“Then I shall count us both lucky.” Reluctant, I at last moved away from him, went to the closet and found the basin with water and cloth kept there for him to wash in the morning, and first wiped myself down before I returned to Shay, who had not so much as twitched from where he was sprawled on the bed, his eyes lidded as he watched me move about the room with visible appreciation for my body. He let me clean him up as well now, and I took far greater care with him, being sure to wipe down the sweat that had slicked his entire body from his exertions prior to returning to Fort Arsenal, even lifting his head from the pillow and soothing the back of his neck, behind his ears, the thick tangle of his hair.

His appreciative noises were near enough to make me wish either of us had the energy to go again. “I shall see if I can get some hot water and a basin,” I told him, laying his head back on the pillow. “And some coffee, I should think, to keep you awake—sleep now seems unsafe.” He nodded wearily. “I’ll send someone for proper food as well, more than just what we could make here. I’m certain Mrs. Finnegan would be perfectly happy to provide.” Shay grinned, his eyes shut.

Setting my hand against his forehead, checking to see how his fever was faring, I asked: “Do you feel well enough to remain alone, or should I send someone else to go out and stay?”

“Can you get Christopher back, just ‘til you return?” Shay asked, not otherwise moving as I took my hand back. “He knows,” he added, as I made a questioning noise. “He and George both beat you to the punch.”

“I had no doubt of that. Do not think I hadn’t noticed that Christopher conspicuously has no cabin of his own on the _Morrígan_.” Shay grinned. “I will get him.” I brushed his hair from his forehead. “You did well tonight,” I said at last, watching the flicker of his eyes beneath his closed lids. “I know how dearly these last few months have cost you, Shay. Someday, I may tell you the truth of the matter, but I feel for the anguish within you better than you could ever know. I would not ask it of you if I did not believe you had the fortitude for it. I can only hope that it is nearly over.” Three Assassins left—and I would be damned if I was forced to let Shay take down Liam. I dearly hoped to handle that one myself. “I’m proud of you, Shay. You are a better man than almost any I have ever known.”

He did not say anything for a time, and then, he took my wrist and pulled my hand to his mouth and pressed a tender kiss to the center of my palm, cupped my hand to his cheek. The agony it brought to me, the break in my façade, I was overwhelmed with gladness to know he had his eyes shut so he could not see whatever traitorous expression my unguarded face at that moment wore. “That,” Shay murmured, so soft I almost lost it, “Means more than the world to me, Sir.”

I leaned over, kissed his forehead, took from him my hand once more. I needed to find my shirt and breeches so I was at least somewhat decent before I went to find Christopher and get Shay more of what he needed. “Rest, Captain Cormac. The world can wait this one morning more.”

It was only once I had dressed and had my hand on the door handle that Shay spoke again. “Hayth?” His throat was scratchy and shot raw, his voice cracking with over-use and dehydration, and in his ragged brogue my name, shortened so by affection that belied our disparate ranks and stations, made me feel so warm it was as if I was the sun. I turned to look at him, eyebrow cocked, to find he had cracked one eye to look at me. He seemed to hesitate, as if regretting speaking, before he added, “Thanks.”

“It was freely given, Shay, and with no little pleasure on my part. Indeed, I should be the one thanking you—it is upon my words that you found yourself in this state. It was the least I could do to help you alleviate it, and it being in such a satisfactory way was no small pleasure for us both, I should think. Now,” I opened the door, “ _Rest_ , Shay, or I shall tell Gist to sit on you to keep you from running all your remaining reserves out your mouth.”

The last sound I heard before I shut the door behind me was Shay’s bright laugh, brilliant as fresh snow beneath the sun.

**Author's Note:**

> the hidden super secret end for this fic is "haytham kenway has two bastard children" and dont fucking @ me about it
> 
> tumblr/twitter @ jonphaedrus


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